A Cloud-Oriented Cross-Domain Security Architecture

The Monterey Security Architecture addresses the need to share high-value data across multiple domains of different classification levels while enforcing information flow policies. The architecture allows users with different security authorizations to securely collaborate and exchange information using commodity computers and familiar commercial client software that generally lack the prerequisite assurance and functional security protections. MYSEA seeks to meet two compelling requirements, often assumed to be at odds: enforcing critical, mandatory security policies, and allowing access and collaboration in a familiar work environment. Recent additions to the MYSEA design expand the architecture to support a cloud of cross-domain services, hosted within a federation of multilevel secure (MLS) MYSEA servers. The MYSEA cloud supports single-sign on, service replication, and network-layer quality of security service. This new cross domain, distributed architecture follows the consumption and delivery model for cloud services, while maintaining the federated control model necessary to support and protect cross domain collaboration within the enterprise. The resulting architecture shows the feasibility of high-assurance, cross-domain services hosted within a community cloud suitable for interagency, or joint, collaboration. This paper summarizes the MYSEA architecture and discusses MYSEA's approach to provide an MLS-constrained cloud computing environment.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

DEFY: A Deniable, Encrypted File System for Log-Structured Storage

The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/ 10.14722/ndss.2015.23078While solutions for file system encryption can prevent an adversary from determining the contents of files, in situations where a user wishes to hide the existence of data, encryption alone is not sufficient. Indeed, encryption may draw attention to those files, as they may likely contain information the user wishes to keep secret. Consequently, adversarial coercion may motivate the owner to surrender their encryption keys, under duress. This paper presents DEFY, a deniable file system following a log-structured design. Maintaining a log-structure is motivated by the technical constraints imposed by solid-state drives, such as those found in mobile devices. These devices have consequential properties that previous work largely ignores. Further, DEFY provides features not offered by prior work, including: authenticated encryption, fast secure deletion, and support for multiple layers of deniability. We consider security against a snapshot adversary, the strongest deniable filesystem adversary considered by prior literature. We have implemented a prototype based on YAFFS and an evaluation shows DEFY exhibits performance degradation comparable to the encrypted file system for flash, WhisperYAFFS

Towards A Cross-Domain MapReduce Framework

The Apache™ Hadoop® framework provides parallel processing and distributed data storage capabilities that data analytics applications can utilize to process massive sets of raw data. These Big Data applications typically run as a set of MapReduce jobs to take advantage of Hadoop’s ease of service deployment and large-scale parallelism. Yet, Hadoop has not been adapted for multilevel secure (MLS) environments where data of different security classifications co-exist. To solve this problem, we have used the Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) Linux kernel extension in a prototype cross-domain Hadoop on which multiple instances of Hadoop applications run at different sensitivity levels. Their accesses to Hadoop resources are constrained by the underlying MLS policy enforcement mechanism. To solve this problem, we have used the Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) Linux kernel extension in a prototype cross-domain Hadoop on which multiple instances of Hadoop applications run at different sensitivity levels. Their accesses to Hadoop resources are constrained by the underlying MLS policy enforcement mechanism. To solve this problem, we have used the Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) Linux kernel extension in a prototype cross-domain Hadoop on which multiple instances of Hadoop applications run at different sensitivity levels. Their accesses to Hadoop resources are constrained by the underlying MLS policy enforcement mechanism. To solve this problem, we have used the Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) Linux kernel extension in a prototype cross-domain Hadoop on which multiple instances of Hadoop applications run at different sensitivity levels. Their accesses to Hadoop resources are constrained by the underlying MLS policy enforcement mechanism. A benefit of our prototype is its extension of the Hadoop Distributed File System to provide a cross-domain read-down capability for Hadoop applications without requiring complex Hadoop server components to be trustworthy

A Cloud-Oriented Cross-Domain Security Architecture

The Monterey Security Architecture addresses the need to share high-value data across multiple domains of different classification levels while enforcing information flow policies. The architecture allows users with different security authorizations to securely collaborate and exchange information using commodity computers and familiar commercial client software that generally lack the prerequisite assurance and functional security protections. MYSEA seeks to meet two compelling requirements, often assumed to be at odds: enforcing critical, mandatory security policies, and allowing access and collaboration in a familiar work environment. Recent additions to the MYSEA design expand the architecture to support a cloud of cross-domain services, hosted within a federation of multilevel secure (MLS) MYSEA servers. The MYSEA cloud supports single-sign on, service replication, and network-layer quality of security service. This new cross domain, distributed architecture follows the consumption and delivery model for cloud services, while maintaining the federated control model necessary to support and protect cross domain collaboration within the enterprise. The resulting architecture shows the feasibility of high-assurance, cross-domain services hosted within a community cloud suitable for interagency, or joint, collaboration. This paper summarizes the MYSEA architecture and discusses MYSEA's approach to provide an MLS-constrained cloud computing environment.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited